Days Black People Not Re-Enslaved By Trump

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Generally speaking there are two types of what I'll call Negro Activists: There is the hand out Negro Activist and the stick 'em up negro activist.
The former complains about how white people aren't giving them enough. Everything would be a crystal stair if only white people gave us more stuff. The latter is usually a convert from the former. Realizing that the "giving" may either not happen or never be enough, they embark on making white people give stuff. To be sure, these archetypes are not unique to Negro Activists. Feminists have the same types but generally target men. But I'm not talking about them today.

Much of the "black rights movement" was lead by the hand out type. When Garvey came along and announced the "New Negro" that would build his own shit and thereby show the world his equality through the strength of his own work, these hand out Negroes lined up to denounce Garvey. These hand out Negroes worked with the feds to get rid of Garvey and to thwart his plans in Africa and the Caribbean (I'm looking at you NAACP). Now, in the year 2018, hand out negroes and stick 'em up Negroes are in high demand as white people have lost their collective minds and allowed themselves to be guilted into supporting all kinds of bullshit that benefits a small number of Negroes who live off of rent seeking off the success of whites. Today's example comes from Uber:

Bozoma Saint John, Uber's chief brand officer, called on white men to help diversify their workplaces.

"I want white men to look around in their office and say, 'Oh look, there's a lot of white men here. Let's change this,'" Saint John said at the SXSW festival on Sunday.

"Brand officer"? That's corporate speak for someone who did none of the hard engineering work to make the business work. But that's not even the point here. the question that ought to be asked is: Why should white men who collectively worked to make a successful company (legal and ethical issues aside) "look around" and change the environment? That's like asking a championship team with a near perfect record to consider fucking up the team because someone wants in.

Saint John said the onus should not be on people of color to improve diversity at work: "Why do I — as the black woman — have to fix that? There's 50 of you, there's one of me. Ya'll fix it. ... Everybody else needs to make the noise — I want white men to make the noise."

You know what? She's right! It's not the job of black people (I'm not speaking on the other POC's cause we all know that she's NOT speaking about Asians be they east or south). If Black people, or women since she brought it up, want to see themselves in huge populations in businesses, you START ONE.

Uber, like most tech companies, is working to diversify its workforce. Its first diversity report, released in March 2017, showed that Uber had no technical leaders who are black or Hispanic. Among non-technical leadership positions, 3.7% were black and 1.2% were Hispanic.

Which is in line with the population of Blacks and Hispanics (not a race) with advanced computer science degrees or other non social science advanced degrees.

"The number of African Americans in Silicon Valley is dismal," said Saint John, who left her marketing leadership job at Apple Music for Uber. "It's not up to one company — it's up to the entire industry to make sure that we are moving the conversation forward. Sometimes those walls of competition need to come down so we can move the entire industry forward."[ My underlines]

So competition needs to "come down" so black folks can get jobs? This means that Bozoma doesn't think that black people are intelligent enough to compete with everyone else in high tech. This means that Bozoma thinks black people are inferior to everyone else. People who think they are inferior to others beg for hand outs or try to do the stick 'em up thing. Which is exactly what she's doing here.

It really gets tiring watching lefty racism on display without so much as a peep from the people who are being insulted. These Negro Activists almost universally believe that black people are either children or inferior adults that need for everybody to stop what they are doing to help them. It's hard to imagine that at one time a man and woman walked the earth who thought that black people were actual adults who should be responsible for their own futures regardless of any hostility they faced.

Monday, March 12, 2018

You know how certain MSM says that "Democracy Dies in Darkness"? Well a nice handy dandy chart shows where Democracy actually dies. Robbed from Steve Sailer at UNZ who screencapped it from the NYT:

Freedom of Speech is an enumerated right in the US Constitution. Diversity is an ideology not enumerated in the US Constitution.
Three groups are clearly a present threat to US Constitutional rights: Women, Blacks and Democrats. 64% of [polled] women think diversity is more important than an enumerated right. 68% of Blacks [polled] think that diversity is more important than an enumerated right to which they were specifically denied during and after slavery and post reconstruction. 66% of [polled] Democrats think diversity is more important than an enumerated right.

Many of these same populations used the "free speech" argument to gain rights and privileges in America. Having come to a point where they have power, they have turned against the very freedom that got them power. It is very clear they have no respect for, as some have put it, "muh constitution".

Tuesday, March 06, 2018

But the more important question is the one these chest-beating politicians and pundits notably refrain from addressing. If Russian election meddling is on par with the Pearl Harbor and 9/11 attacks, then should the U.S. response be on par with its response to those attacks? Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor prompted U.S. involvement in a world war and, ultimately, dropping two nuclear bombs on Japan; 9/11 initiated wars in multiple countries that still, 17 years later, have no end in sight, along with a systematic and still-worsening erosion of basic civil liberties.

I too had this question when I saw the "news". It just goes to show that a lot of these folks are just out to say anything. You'll note that the above claims have been memory holed. It's not an accident. The MSM doesn't really want people asking these questions. Besides if tweets and Facebook posts are Pearl Harbor then what was the take down of the government in Ukraine?

Thursday, March 01, 2018

I promise I did not read this before writing my original post but it definitely underscores the point of that post:

Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch issued a concurring opinion, noting that the courts should never have granted standing to this alien to begin with and that the case should immediately be dismissed, not just remanded. Existing law (8 U.S.C. §§ 1252(b)(9), 1226(c)) already kicks the courts out of this case altogether, in their opinion. Thomas seemed bewildered that the DOJ didn’t even assert this argument. This is a point I’ve made, that the DOJ didn’t assert a similar jurisdiction-stripping provision (§1201(h)(i)) against litigation pertaining to denial of visas as part of the immigration pause executive order.

Why hasn't the DOJ assert the argument? Politics. Why isn't the DOJ asserting federal law? Because the people running the place do not have the will to do so. Disgrace.

So the recent shooting that has not occurred in a black neighborhood, where such things are apparently not worthy of much, if any, attention has the press doing it's usual shtick. Men who are slowly but surely becoming as emotional as women when it comes to these things are generally competing to see who can be the most sympathetic and approval seeking. Rational minded people, both men and women, are being cast as kid killers, Nazis, and klan members for simply upholding their rights and objecting to be treated like criminals. It seems that one of the issues is that perhaps a large portion of US society fails to understand (or even know) natural law and how man made laws sprung out of it.

In all of our genes is the coding for a flight or fight response. Most of us have little control over these reactions. Heart rates increase. Blood pressure goes up. Adrenaline kicks in. Vision narrows. These reactions are nature's means of telling us to defend our lives. Sometimes that defense is running as fast as you can. Sometimes that defense is harming the threat until it isn't a threat any more. The vast majority of times the run response is the path taken. We can call this cowardice if we want to, but it's a natural reaction. Among mammalian species the female typically will fight if her young are threatened. The male on the other hand will not only fight to protect himself, but he will fight to protect his female mate and often his offspring. Mostly because in nature if he does not do so, the next male will kill his offspring and mate with the now available female.

I was watching an episode of Blue Planet where a polar bear had found a female to mate with. This occurrence is apparently a rare event. This bear mated with the female and fought a number of other males, to the point where he was limping and blood was all over his body. Just to make sure he could mate. The female? She was wandering off, pregnant and unscarred. That's some male privilege for you. But I digress. The point being that self defense by whatever means necessary is a natural law. If you are threatened you have the natural right to end that threat.

Armaments are extensions of this law. Not many species can craft weapons. That takes a level of intelligence AND a body capable of manipulating materials. This ability to create weapons is an extension of the natural right to defend oneself. Whether that weapon is a arrow, blade, sword, sling shot, or firearm. There is no doubt that the founders of the Republic understood this. The second amendment was not created as some means to protect "hunting" as so many in the gun control side of the argument like to say. While hunting may be an activity in which guns are used, one should not be fooled into thinking that one needs to have such a justification for gun ownership or ownership of any weapon of any kind.

What has informed the gun control issue is the rapid urbanization of society in addition to racial angles. Modern gun control was initiated as a response to the Black Panther party for self defense. When the Black Panthers decided to patrol the streets with guns and watch police, which was perfectly legal, there was alarm about "armed negroes". Gun control legislation soon flourished. To be sure that is not the first time that alarm about "armed negroes" occurred in America, but it should serve as a reminder to those who are for gun control to know that it has been historically used to control an "undesirable" population. Yesterday that undesirable population was black folks. Today it is white, largely rural, heterosexual males.

Urbanization has come along with often heavily armed police who are often not present when the threat to one's person is actually occurring. Since such threats are, at least for non-blacks, a rare occurrence, it allows non-black persons to believe that no one is in *need* of arms. Even though there is no constitutional requirement of personal *need* in order to have the right to a firearm (or weapon of any kind). While we are inundated with news about criminals (new or old) who shoot up schools or worksites, we rarely hear of the times when a person who is not a police officer used a gun to defend themselves or others. Yet these things happen often.

Incredibly, the fact that gun restriction laws do nothing to stop those intent on breaking the law from obtaining and using guns seems to escape the conversation. It's as if it is inconceivable to a large proportion of US society that there are people who don't give a flip about laws on the books. Murder is illegal, yet it happens. Rape is illegal, yet it happens. Assault and battery are illegal, yet it happens. I could go on and on. The fact is that law breakers don't care what legal obstacles are in place. Their only real concern is whether they can get away with said act (assuming not to be suicidal).

Increasingly society is being turned into "mandatory flight". laws are on the books that if someone is threatening you then you must try to remove yourself from the situation. If you know how to defend yourself and stand your ground and seriously injure or kill a person who poses a threat to you, YOU may end up prosecuted for using unreasonable force or murder. When these school shootings happen, the instructions are to run and hide. Fight only if it's the last resort (the gunman has entered the room you barricaded yourself in and hope you can take him out with hand to hand combat. Sure.

Those of us who do not desire to be rendered sitting ducks by the state are seen as unreasonable. We are called all manner of names because we wish to act in our own defense (and those of others). The state is acting in manner that constrains the law abiding rather than the law breaking. That 10 day waiting period? Won't stop a criminal. That "gun must be unloaded and carried in a container separate from the ammunition" law? Yeah, criminals certainly unload their weapons when traveling. That concealed carry permit that is only good in one state? Yeah, criminals are certainly observing that. Can't have your weapon in an Airport? Sure. All constraints on the law abiding. But this is what is going on in America. The state seeks to constrain the law abiding. Be it gun control or speech.

So Sessions is annoyed enough by Trump's commentary about him to respond somewhat. That's nice but lets be clear: Sessions IS a disgrace and that fruit has not fallen far from the tree.

The Attorney General generally takes his cue from the executive. After all, he reports to and can be fired by the executive (for whatever reason) regardless of what certain members of congress think. Hence an inactive or distracted justice department is a direct reflection of the executive. Why are both Sessions and Trump a disgrace? All we have to do is look at the states and cities in open rebellion against the union and the non reaction to them.

Lets take a walk down memory lane to when Obama was president. Arizona, a state, decided that it was going to finally "do something" about illegal aliens in it's borders. It passed a law that allowed it's officers to check the immigration status of anyone they stopped. The constitutional basis for this was that once police have probable cause to stop someone, they can use their discretion to inquire about immigration status. "Hispanic" leadership immediately took offense, saying that this amounted to racial profiling (Hispanic is not a race). Never mind that over 70% of illegal aliens in the United States are Mexican nationals and Arizona borders Mexico.

What did the Obama administration do? Did they sit on their ass? Did they give a news conference and then go about business as usual? No. The Obama administration immediately sued the state:

The lawsuit is part of a broader approach by President Barack Obama to deal with the 10.8 million illegal immigrants believed to be in the country, arguing that immigration is the responsibility of the federal government not each state.

“Seeking to address the issue through a patchwork of state laws will only create more problems than it solves,” U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, said in a statement.

The Arizona law was passed on April 9, 2010. The lawsuit was filed in July 6, 2010 before the law could take effect. That was 3 months. Three months. What did the Supreme Court say when the case reached them?

“Arizona may have under­standable frustrations with the problems caused by illegal immigration while that process continues,” he wrote, “but the state may not pursue policies that undermine federal law.”

The court threw out three such provisions in the Arizona law. It said the state cannot make it a misdemeanor for immigrants to not carry registration documents; criminalize the act of an illegal immigrant seeking employment; or authorize state officers to arrest someone on the belief that the person has committed an offense that makes him deportable.

If it is opinion of the highest court in the land that the states have limited ability to deal with illegal aliens and that they cannot pursue policies that undermine federal law? Then why are all these cities and states getting away with doing just that? Why are Sessions and Trump sitting on their asses on this matter?

In September of 2017 California passes a "sanctuary state" law. How long ago was that? 6 months ago. In January of 2018 the law went into effect. Where is Sessions? Where is Trump?

When Arizona passed its laws, which the supreme court said wasn't within its rights because immigration is a federal issue, the Obama administration went directly into action. They didn't even wait for the law to go into effect. Meanwhile California brazenly proposed, passed and allowed a law that contravenes federal law and the only thing Sessions did was give a speech.

That is a disgrace. thats fucking incompetence or complete dereliction of duty.

City clerk Anna Valencia is asking for another million dollars to establish the ID program, which would provide cards not only for undocumented immigrants, but also for others who can’t get officials IDs.

However, Ald. David Moore, and others like him, question whether the program is necessary, given that there is a state ID card already available...

The proposal requires all city departments to accept the city card as a valid form of identification, a key point for Emanuel as he seeks to give undocumented immigrants a way to identify themselves while filing police reports, buying city stickers, paying bills or seeking to gain access to public buildings.

Plain as day violation of federal law which prohibit helping an illegal alien to enter and remain in the United States. And Chicago is not alone with this. Where is Sessions? Where is Trump. Federal law is being openly violated. Nobody is hiding the fact that they are committing felonies and are doing so in an organized fashion. Where are the arrests? Where are the indictments?

We have indictments of foreign nationals who are not even in the country for posting shit on Facebook and Twitter, yet we can't indict and arrest government officials for clear violations of federal law?

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Shortly after the election I wrote a post that discussed how Trump's "America First" aka "MAGA" movement would be extremely beneficial for African-Americans, particularly those without college degrees:

All those black folks with higher wages than before thanks to the idea of bringing jobs BACK. Black folks stand to win with less illegal immigration and even legal immigration. Black folks stand to win with an America first ideology that brings back or creates manufacturing jobs that can employ those persons not particularly suited for jobs requiring advanced education.

It will be rather interesting if during the presidency of a Republican (in name only?) black unemployment drops significantly.

Not only has Black unemployment dropped, to allegedly historical lows, but we have direct evidence that increased scrutiny of illegal aliens employed by companies has netted many black jobs:

About 800 employees of the main Cloverhill Bakery on the Northwest Side and the company’s bakeries in Cicero and Romeoville lost their jobs when the audit found many were hired after presenting fake or stolen IDs.

Eight what?

In May 2017, the Trump administration sent letters to about 800 employees, saying they weren’t authorized to work in the United States, records examined by the Chicago Sun-Times show.

Those Hispanic employees didn’t return to work, leaving the bakery desperate to fill their jobs. So the company turned to another placement agency, Metro Staff Inc., and it provided Cloverhill with workers screened through the government’s “E-Verification” program. Most of those new employees are African American.

So while the first black president pussy footed around with this company and got SQUAT for black people in Chicago that voted for him. Trump got over 500 (they said most of the 800 not all, so I can only say over 500) black folks in Chicago jobs and you won't hear so much as a "thank you" from any of the talking heads.

Ed French, owner of Elgin-based Metro Staff Inc., says his company became the main provider of workers for the bakery and that about 80 percent of them are black. According to French, workers at the bakery were paid slightly less before his company was hired two and a half years ago — with wages up by about 25 cents an hour, to just above minimum wage.

640 black folks hired AND got more pay than they would have had.

This for a population that voted Democrat by over 90%.

Sheeeeeeeeet.

And what do these mofos do with this gift?

But Okwusa says Cloverhill soon ran into problems. In a memo to the company, Okwusa, who is African American, wrote that the black workers “displayed a higher turnover rate of over 40 percent and a lower efficiency rate than their Hispanic co-workers.”

Now I would hope that this turnover rate is due to going to a better job but I've seen this story before and it's unlikely AND doesn't explain the lower efficiency rate. This kind of behavior is why folks end up not wanting to hire black folks.

At the end of the day, at least for Chicago African-Americans, Trump delivered the goods. If we [continue] to fail when these opportunities are opened to us, then we have no one else to blame but ourselves.

Continuing:

A Hispanic woman who formerly worked at the bakery says the ICE audit cost her husband his job. But she says she didn’t feel tension between Hispanic and black workers because, “In the time that I worked there, honestly, I didn’t see any black workers. They came later.”

They had no intentions on hiring black folks.

Black workers couldn’t communicate well with Spanish-speaking Mexican workers and supervisors, according to Lane, who blames the company for the resulting confusion.

“When I first started, and when they first put me in as a packer, I asked the question, ‘Do they speak English?’ ” she says. “And they said: ‘Everybody.’ But when I went to communicate with them, no one spoke English.”

I'm old. I'm old enough to remember when all that homosexuals said they wanted was to be left alone. I remember when they said that they only wanted the government out of their bedrooms. I remember when they said that all they wanted was the right to be with their loved ones in the hospital. I remember when they said they only wanted the same tax benefits as other "couples". I remember when they said that how does allowing homosexuals to marry have any affect on your life?

Now I see "My Two Dads" being read at school. I see Christian bakers being told they have no rights that a homosexual ought recognize.

I see states and cities passing laws that you can't call a male and male if said male is sick in the head and thinks he's a female.

On Friday, Ohio parents were denied custody of their daughter for not being supportive enough of her alleged transgenderism...

Hamilton County Judge Sylvia Sieve Hendon granted custody to the girl's maternal grandparents, who are open to transgender hormone therapy. The teenager has been living with them since 2016.

In a sane world, the case would have been thrown out, the child returned to her parents and told that once she is of age (usually 18) she can leave home and do whatever she wants (and can afford) with her body.

But we don't live in a sane world. We live with state enforced transgenderism.

One of the arguments against welfare is that it encourages idleness. After all, if you can do nothing and receive income, why would you work? Most of us are not wired to accept that kind of existence. However there are a lot of people who will do whatever they have to to remain on the government teat, which is really your wallet. The NY Times recently ran an article that showed an example of this issue.

A few miles away in another wooded suburb, Emilia DiCola, 28, an aspiring opera singer who scrapes by with gigs at churches and in local theaters, has no such complaints. She qualifies for Medicaid — free government health insurance that millions more low-income Americans have gained through an expansion of the program under the Affordable Care Act.

She's an aspiring what? Why should the taxpayer subsidize her dreams of becoming an opera singer rather than doing whatever [else] she can to not be on the government teat?

Though roughly the same age, Ms. DiCola has followed a different course. She dropped out of the Manhattan School of Music in 2009 after her freshman year because she couldn’t keep up with the tuition. Now, to supplement the scant income she gets from singing gigs, she drives for Uber and Lyft a few nights a week, sometimes more, in Boston. She earned about $15,000 last year, making sure she stayed under the threshold to qualify for Medicaid.

“I feel like it’s no different from what corporations do all the time, taking advantage of tax breaks and that sort of thing,” Ms. DiCola, a soprano who talks animatedly about Verdi and Puccini, said of being on Medicaid. “Frankly, if they’re allowed to do it, why shouldn’t I?”

"Making sure she stayed under the threshold to qualify for Medicaid."

Incentivizing behavior.

Then there's this comment about corporations. One big difference between this chick and the vast majority of corporations: They create jobs (The quality of which is not a topic of discussion here). This woman's life goal creates no productive jobs. Meanwhile...:

Ms. Hurd finished college at the University of Massachusetts, with her parents paying for it, and has a master’s degree in communications, which she got tuition-free while working in admissions at Southern New Hampshire University. She’s been working about 30 hours a week at the outlet mall and a small remodeling firm while looking for a job with good benefits in communications or marketing.

Her husband, Matt, started his contracting business a few years ago and is finishing his undergraduate degree with the help of a loan. They bought a 1750s farmhouse just before they married; Ms. Hurd returned to work when their son, Harry, was eight weeks old.

This is what pisses people off. It's one thing to provide help for those who have fallen on hard times. But when people choose to be unproductive, specifically to stay on the government teat, that is unacceptable. What this DiCola person needs to be told is:

Glad you want to be an opera singer but see here, you drive that Uber till the wheels come off. You do part time school to get a degree in something that pays or learn a trade and get off the government teat.

Friday, February 16, 2018

So we have another school shooting. The usual suspicious politicians are saying the usual things and the people are sitting ducks.

Consider this. This guy entered the school grounds and went to at least 5 classrooms shooting at will, meeting no resistance whatsoever and when he was done he walked away and went to McDonalds and Walmart before he was arrested. I saw a report, among many that discussed how teachers locked the doors to the classrooms and waited.

A nation of sitting ducks.

I didn't know that at one time in America, students were taught to handle guns

So then at what point did schools become not only gun free but a place where basic shit like self defense is verboten and people hide behind doors and wait and hope for other men with guns to come rescue them? That is a pretty huge cultural shift.

Policy makers know full well that enabling people to act on the spot will save lives. Witness the proliferation of defibrillators that have been installed in many schools and office buildings. Why are they there? They are there because we know that in an emergency situation, time is of the essence. If we empower the people in the vicinity to render aid then they are more likely to survive until the medical professionals arrive. Yet when it comes to personal safety, the ability to defend oneself, which is the fundamental essence of the second amendment, this fact based knowledge goes out the window.

Had cruz met resistance after making himself known as a threat, far less people would have been killed or injured. As a matter of fact, it is likely that if Cruz knew that he would most definitely meet deadly resistance should he embark on his mission, he may have decided not to go through with the act.

How is it that the American public sees it as a virtue to be socialized into believing it is a good thing to be a helpless potential victim waiting on big daddy government to help them rather than being an individual capable of helping themselves?

I remember in the gym where I work out, going to a room with Chinese Butterfly knives to train with. The number of people who were shook at the sight of these training weapons (they were blunt) surprised me. Never mind that every dumbbell in the gym was a deadly weapon, these folks were shook. I was told I couldn't bring these items back because people felt threatened.

And that's the root of this problem. We have people making decisions based on their emotions and their inability to deal with the risks of a free society. If they feel threatened or uncomfortable, someone else must change their behavior. It's someone else's responsibility to make me feel safe. It is someone else's responsibility to coddle my emotional state. Someone, anyone, must do something so that I do not have to do anything.

Thursday, February 08, 2018

-Emperor Palpatine, Return of The Jedi
While Trump gets blasted for making statements about illegal immigration that was common among Democrats until it wasn't, People on the ground continue to live with the results of the non-functioning occupation government that is inhabiting Washington DC. One of the reasons that one restricts immigration is to control population growth. In California they are seeing serious water supply problems. No one there wants to admit it, but part of their problem is the millions of people that are in the state who should not be who use water resources.

Another reason for immigration restriction is to protect jobs and wages for people who are already here. As anyone who has taken pre-economics knows, if you increase the supply of a good or service, then it's value in the marketplace drops. Why should I pay a vendor 50 bucks for a product when there are 12 others who are willing to sell the same product for $5? I was bitten by this very issue when I had a business doing web design and digital video. When ISPs started offering free website design tools and services to my potential clients in return for their monthly bill, I could not compete. Similarly, when iMovie and iDVD made it relatively easy for my potential clients to make their own DVDs, then my services, using Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro were no longer competitive (for the market I was in). I eventually figured out that I was paying my clients to do work for them. I closed up shop for more profitable ventures in casinos. And when you make more money in a casino then you would doing a "real job" you know there is a serious problem.

The point being here that cheap rivals undermine the economy for all competitors with devastating consequences. Meet the suicidal taxi driver.

On Monday morning, Doug Schifter, a livery driver in his early 60s, killed himself with a shotgun in front of City Hall in Lower Manhattan, having written a lengthy Facebook post several hours earlier laying out the structural cruelties that had left him in such dire circumstance. He was now sometimes forced to work more than 100 hours a week to survive, he said; when he had started out in the 1980s, a 40-hour week was fairly typical. He blamed politicians — mayors Michael R. Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo — and their acquiescence to the rich for permitting so many cars to flood the streets. He blamed the Taxi Commission for the fines and hassles it imposed...

He had lost his health insurance and accrued credit card debt and he would no longer work for “chump change,’’ preferring, he said, to die in the hope that his sacrifice would draw attention to what drivers, too often unable to feed their families now, were enduring...

Implicit in his testament was the anger he felt over the de-professionalization of his life’s work. Mr. Schifter had driven more than five million miles throughout his tenure, through five hurricanes and 50 snowstorms. He had chauffeured celebrities and worn a suit. He was not driving a car to supplement the income he was getting from his crepe business and he was not trying to make a little extra money for a gym membership. He was not a participant in the gig economy; he was a casualty of it.

I see personal vehicles being used as taxis all over the place. In fact, if I see a Camry on the road I almost always assume it is a taxi, particularly if it is driven by a non-white male. I would say that I am right 60% of the time. Now you may be wondering what this has to do with immigration. Well in NY, where this event took place, the taxi business is essentially an immigrant work business. The reason why businesses like unrestricted immigration is that it creates an excess of workers. This excess drives down wages. Suddenly a job that could support a family can't. And then you have politicians that will call you lazy because you won't work yourself to death for diminishing wages.

While Uber has sold that “disruption” as positive for riders, for many taxi workers, it has been devastating. Between 2013 and 2016, the gross annual bookings of full-time yellow-taxi drivers in New York, working during the day when fares are typically highest, fell from $88,000 a year to just over $69,000. Medallions, which grant the right to operate a taxi in New York City, were now depreciating assets and drivers who had borrowed money to pay for them, once a sound investment strategy, were deeply in debt. Ms. Desai was routinely seeing grown men cry and she had become increasingly concerned about the possibility that they would begin taking their lives.

Notice that Uber is claiming a "positive for riders". This is like the fake "net neutrality" argument. Riders get "cheap" fares like internet customers get cheap streaming. There is absolutely no discussion of the disruption to the people who were previously making a decent living being taxi drivers. No, all that matters is that riders get cheap rides (and that Uber makes it's cut off each ride). Many failed to understand that the medallion system served two purposes: It kept salaries up by creating scarcity of product (taxis) and reduced congestion, particularly in Manhattan.

For decades there had been no more than 12,000 to 13,000 taxis in New York but now there were myriad new ways to avoid public transportation, in some cases with ride-hailing services like Via that charged little more than $5 to travel in Manhattan. In 2013, there were 47,000 for-hire vehicles in the city. Now there were more than 100,000, approximately two-thirds of them affiliated with Uber.

The situation in the taxi industry is a portrait of what happens when a country is flooded with people. Now replicate this situation in construction. Replicate this in IT. Add the coming advances in AI. But it is only at the end that this guy comes to realize that his livelihood was destroyed by government policies that favored businesses that want plentiful and cheap labour. The same businesses that go all in to tell you how Trump is evil incarnate for suggesting policies that would have kept this guy's income at a level where he would not have been so desperate.

Uber is making money. The dealerships leasing these vehicles are making money. The NYSDMV is making money off the registration and inspection fees (higher for TLC vehicles) and the garages providing brakes, tires and oil changes are making out like bandits.

You want open borders and unlimited workers? You got it. Don't say you weren't warned.

Side note: You see that Via ride for $5 to travel in Manhattan? Let me explain how bad this is. Given the traffic in Manhattan and the time it takes to get to a location, a driver charging $5 per manhattan ride needs at least 20 minutes to complete a transaction. That's $15/hour at best. This same person can learn Blackjack basic strategy for Hit 17, use a 1-3 bet spread and make far more than $15/hour spending his time at Empire City or Resorts world casinos. It is literally and financially better to gamble in the NYC area casinos than to work with Via. This is how bad the "gig economy" is.